At the dawn of the Nagyszombat Synod

Traces, preparations and approaches of local synodal activity in the Kingdom of Hungary after the Battle of Mohács

Abstract

This paper examines what happened to the legislative text of the "medieval Hungarian synodal landscape," the late medieval synodal book of Esztergom, after the Battle of Mohács. These decrees were used by the Hungarian church districts in the medieval Kingdom of Hungary for almost a century and a half. What marked the obsolescence of the medieval text? How did Hungarian high priests approach this text before the Synod of Nagyszombat (1560)? Was it immediately abandoned? Was it modified? How did the technical innovation of printing serve this synodal activity? I seek to answer the above questions by examining three historical sources from the transitional period between 1526 and 1560. These three sources are an early modern copy of the ordo of the synod held by the prelate of Szepes, Szaniszló Váraljai in 1545; the annotations printed in 1560 by the administrator of Nyitra, Pál Bornemisza, as an annex to the diocesan synodal decisions of 1494; and the minutes of the 1559 bishops' meeting in Bratislava, which preceded the synod of Nagyszombat. Each of these sources not only contains valuable data for evaluating synodal activity in the transitional period, but also raises several questions for consideration by scholars of the earlier history of the medieval church.